The governor vanishes: Can Californians handle the truth about Gavin Newsom’s whereabouts?

Amid accelerating speculation about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lengthening absence from public view last weekend, Jennifer Siebel Newsom channeled movie Marine Col. Nathan R. Jessup in a Twitter outburst declaring “certain folks can’t handle truth.”

The first partner’s “A Few Good Men” moment certainly got across the Newsoms’ sense of high-handed entitlement. But it was off-key for a few reasons, chief among them that the governor’s constituents hadn’t been told the truth.

The first partner acknowledged as much in her own later-deleted tweet, which referred obliquely to the governor’s abrupt cancellation of a planned trip to the ongoing climate conference in Scotland: “When someone cancels something, maybe they’re just in the office working; maybe in their free time they’re at home with their family, at their kids’ sports matches, or dining out with their wife.” Indeed, maybe the governor was doing any or all of these things, but neither he nor his spouse had deigned to be more definitive about the schedule of California’s top public official.

In late October, Newsom’s office had announced that he and his wife would “join global leaders” at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow the following week to “highlight California’s groundbreaking policies to combat the intensifying climate crisis.” Four days later, all of the first couple’s global get-up-and-go evanesced in a terse statement to the effect that Newsom would not be attending due to unspecified “family obligations.”

The governor’s office added that he planned to participate “virtually,” but any such participation failed to materialize for more than a week. The details of Newsom’s activities and obligations, as well as the governor himself, remained equally scarce.

On Monday, the governor’s office explained that he had spent the previous week working “in the Capitol with staff on urgent issues including COVID-19 vaccines for kids, boosters, ports, the forthcoming state budget, and California’s continued economic recovery.” And on Tuesday, he attended an economic conference in Monterey, his first public appearance since he received a COVID vaccine booster on Oct. 27, and finally offered the explanation that he had skipped the conference to spend Halloween with his children.

As Siebel Newsom suggested, the governor and his family are entitled to a sphere of privacy encompassing matters of no legitimate public interest. But that does not include his participation in international conferences, work on behalf of the people of California or whereabouts for 12 days. If he needs a vacation for Halloween or anything else, he should just say so.

One can position oneself as a world leader in one breath and then haughtily dismiss any duty to inform those one leads in the next, but only at the risk of inviting confusion.

Newsom’s withdrawal from the climate conference may have been right by accident. Whether he fancies himself one or not, the governor isn’t a world leader; he’s a sub-national leader, and it’s not clear that attending international conferences is the most productive use of his time. But hurriedly dispatching Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis in his place and struggling to account for what prevented his attendance made the administration’s decision look haphazard, undermined its supposed seriousness about the climate in the wake of extreme wildfires and halting policy progress, and perpetuated a pattern of gratuitously impeding routine press coverage.

The governor was sighted during his walkabout by one unlikely constituent of the fourth estate: Vogue magazine recorded the Newsoms attending the over-the-top San Francisco wedding of fossil fuel heiress Ivy Love Getty, which is basically the opposite of a climate change conference.

The governor’s autumn recess was mysterious enough to stoke theorizing about unprecedented repercussions from the booster shot he received just before disappearing, a possibility his aides were compelled to knock down.

Some of the gossip was the malicious work of the governor’s political enemies, but Newsom has himself to blame for baiting the trolls. Maybe the first partner is right about our capacity for truth, but we won’t know for sure until the governor tries telling it.

This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 2:36 PM.